BanglaCricket Article

A fresh tour with Zimbabwe has started. It has started with the dream of winning our maiden test victory. If the victory really comes this way, how satisfied are we going to be? Or, if it does not, then how badly burnt will we be?

Cutting down the negativisms?

by F Waliullah

Published: 4th January, 2005

A fresh tour with Zimbabwe has started. It has started with the dream of winning our maiden test victory. If the victory really comes this way, how satisfied are we going to be? Or, if it does not, then how badly burnt will we be?

First of all, we have to look at all the positives of our very short history with Zimbabwe. On more than one occassion, we have a test innings score of over 250, against Zimbabwe, a feat which we have never done against any other test nation so consistently.

One of our few Test hundreds have come against them, our only 5-for by a pace bowler has come against them, almost all of our One Day International totals of 250 have come against them. Even our maiden and lone ODI century has come against them.

And yet, there are many things that which we are not so proud of. When we went on our second away tour to Zimbabwe, we were dreaming of our maiden test victory against Zimbabwe, and had the ensurity by the team management and the players that we would get an ODI win against Zimbabwe just early last year. Well, we did not get our maiden test victory then, but we certainly got our ODI win, does not matter how close it was in the end.

Now let us concentrate on the negatives, apart from the fact that we lost all our matches against them except for that single ODI win, we were victim of a test hat-trick, we could never restrict the Zimbabweans below 400 in their first innings; which is a fact that we must be careful this time around, and above all, in 4 of our 6 tests, we were all out below 200 on 4 occassions!

Now if we are to win our maiden test victory, we must ensure that we do not fall below 200 this time. And as per Habibul Bashar, our captain has said in today\'s morning papers, our fear is not the opposition bowling or batting or fielding, our main fear is our own players.